“No one. He seemed to be happy in his engagement. All went well until this inf--this dreadful sixth sense of his seized upon him, threatening to wring the very soul out of him.” “I believe he has always hankered after Maggie Hutchinson.” “How can that be? We have not coerced his judgment. He has not made the slightest effort to meet her for years. I am not prone to superstition, but there are times when I imagine that the watch Constantine gave him is an evil thing, a constant reminder of the man’s unhappy death.” To what a depth of misery must my old friend have been reduced before he would seek such an ignoble explanation of his sorrows! “Unberufen! Unberufen!” cried Mrs. Grier, for she was born in the Black Forest, and the scientific essay was not yet written which should rescue her wholly from belief in cryptic omens of malign import. On the morning of my departure for Como, Karl did not appear at breakfast. His mother went to him. She found him in his dressing-room, smoking in seeming content. “Now, Karl,” she said, sitting on an arm of his easy chair and placing a loving hand on his shoulder, “tell me all about it.” He was far too wise to pretend to misunderstand. “There is not much to tell, mother,” he said placidly. “I find that I cannot marry Nora, and, in view of the wide-spread interest taken in our engagement, that is a sad thing, is it not?” “What is stopping you from marrying her?” “Some intangible influence which you women call love. It is an affinity whose properties are shared by all creation, from unicellular protozoa up or down, to the highest anthropoids. Even air and water are composed of sympathetic gases, so--” “Karl, be serious.” “Mother, I _am_ serious. Paris was drawn to Helen by a living force which leaped the strongest walls of reason and morality, and the same impetuous movement unites two atoms of hydrogen to one atom of oxygen in order to form water. Now, wait a moment! Introduce a Menelaus or an atom of nitrogen, and you have an explosion.” “You are fencing with me, _liebchen_.” “Indeed, I am not.” “Then, if Margaret Hutchinson is your Helen, and there is no Menelaus, you must tell Nora Cazenove that it would not be fair to her to take her as your wife when you love another.” “Do you think that is the best thing to do?” “I am so sure of it that if you dislike the task I will go to her myself.” Karl saw that his mother meant what she said. Heavy-hearted by the necessity of it, he set himself deliberately to deceive her. “There is no harm in waiting a few days,” he said. “There is every harm. Your father is quite beside himself with care. I have never seen him so disturbed.” Karl bit his pipe firmly between his teeth. His father had kept the secret, then? His mother did not know all. “I have a reason for saying that,” he continued, after a slight pause. “However faithfully I may have worshiped Maggie from afar there is no knowing how she regards me.” “But you _do_ know.”